It burned. It burned. It burned. It burned...

Searing agony crashed through his body, peeling away skin layer by layer, setting fat aflame, shredding muscle thread by thread, gnawing upon his bones and grinding them to meal. It went deeper, spiked higher, sent magma coursing through his veins. It was what he imagined being staked with a bar of white-hot iron would feel like as the blazing piece of metal was slowly hammered in strike by strike. But even that pain, stronger than anything he'd ever felt in his life, paled in comparison to the unbearable, indescribable torment that followed in his head a few seconds later. It felt as if his hair had turned to dust, melted away by acid, followed by the skin falling away in flakes, then his skull sizzling and hissing as it was washed away by the corrosive mass. He screamed, he thrashed, all coherent thought shattered beyond repair. In the midst of that Hell, trying to resist did not even occur to him. And then he died.

...

The pain! The pain! The pain! The pain!

Darkness and blessed oblivion were cast back by the baleful glare of a supernova, the impossible, unbearable heat of its coming penetrating to every corner of his existence and forcing a broken, pale imitation of awareness upon him. He writhed and shook and flailed until bones broke under muscles that tore themselves apart in the mindless, futile struggle to throw off the excruciating weight of this new existence. But try as it might, his own body could not self-terminate. They were bindings placed upon him, unseen but not unfelt, restrictions that stopped him from tearing out his own throat, from gouging out his madly rolling eyes, from punching himself in the throat to crush his own trachea. Anything to escape the twin bolts of annihilation that had speared through him, but something prevented him from putting an end to it all and his own body healed too quickly to succumb to the rest nearly as quickly as he wanted it to. So he wailed, and cried, and begged for release until his throat had been scraped raw and even his voice failed him. There his body kept slowly shaking itself apart little by little until the agonizing light of existence faded away. And then he died for the second time.

...

No! No! Not again! He didn't want this! He hadn't asked for it!

Reality did not cooperate or even listen to his wordless pleading so he tried to speak them out loud but the pain was too much. His chest felt like it had caved in, his head crushed by an unseen vise. All that came out were screams and then more screams and then even more screams. As the sensation of being crushed grew and grew and grew and grew, his shouting became weaker and weaker, both the air with which to scream and the will to act squeezed out of him like water from a sponge. He lay down that way in a bed he only knew was there in his most lucid moments, fading in and out from consciousness for longer and longer periods as exhaustion seemed to mount every time he blacked out. But of course it did. How could it not? You could not breathe or get blood flowing with a crushed chest and even one such as he would eventually die without both. So there he lay, waiting for the inevitable, trying to grasp at the last fleeting moments of awareness. His last thought before the darkness was a confused realization. How could he think with a crushed skull? And then he died for the third time.

...

Awareness crashed through him like a thunderbolt.

Just like with a real thunderbolt, it came with searing agony and a great deal of shock that thoroughly banished all traces of unconsciousness from him. Fortunately, the sensation of being torn apart from within did not last long. It soon subsided in the twin pains of a spike being driven through his chest and the mother of all migraines pounding in his head. He ignored them as best he could and took stock of his situation. He was lying on an impossibly soft, comfortable bed that practically oozed restfulness and recovery, though perhaps 'strapped down' would be a more accurate description. There were no chains or bindings or any actual straps to this, but a metaphysical pressure, a suppression of his ability to get out of the bed by himself. Other people could have come and pulled him up as easily as any other person of his height and build, but his own attempts to do so, conscious or otherwise, were stymied. Perhaps it was for the best. The bed, after all, was helping in his recovery, speeding it up a lot more than any bed should have.

Even so, he could not linger on it until his body had mended from this... whatever it was on its own. He had things to do, plans in the works that required either his direct contribution or his guidance, even some responsibilities and obligations despite what he had become. Being delayed by mere infirmity, whatever the cause, was unacceptable in many ways. To rectify this, he reached for his magic, that deep well of power that allowed him to rearrange reality to his desires, transfer and exchange, transform and sacrifice. The well was as familiar as it was welcoming and even in the exhaustion and suffering of his current situation it was a pleasant balm to his woes. Soon it would be more than that, it would be swift restoration, the banishment of his recent woes. He reached into the well for a handful of raw Change, the metaphysical substance that allowed him to do magic. It felt a little odd, different from what he'd used before. Perhaps a hair denser? No matter, he would study this change further after he restored himself. With a nod to himself, he shaped a spell of healing of only middling power but still a hundred times greater than the benefits of the bed. The spell formed for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, then it wavered, then it collapsed catastrophically. And then he died for the fourth time.

...

Awareness came to him slowly but steadily.

With it came memory, followed by comprehension. Churning thoughts brought with them spikes of pain all the way through his brain... but it was only pain. Not flaying skin and melting muscle, not gnawed away bone, let alone brain actually pulped by crushing force. Those sensations were figments or maybe echoes, things he felt that were not actually happening to him. So, too, for his chest. His heart hurt as if it had burst, but was still beating to pump blood. His lungs burned as if an explosion had happened inside his chest cavity but he was still breathing, if with great difficulty. Said chest cavity might feel not just broken but shattered, his ribs splintered into a thousand fragments that had been driven into the delicate organs they should have been protecting and his spine pulverized by a lethal projectile, but in reality it was not so. Pain, memories of pain, or perhaps echoed sensations like phantom limb syndrome. But the pain would only be passing. That had already been proven by his slow but steady improvement every time he relived the experience, each round through death and back. That he did not actually die, that he felt all the things with whose memory his nerves tingled and shook, the kind of damage that had it been real instead of imagined would not have hurt at all... there was a price to all things. That, he knew very well.

So he didn't try to get up, he didn't try to make his recovery go faster, or force his jumbled memories into coherence. He lay back and only reached for the tiniest bit of Change he ever had. But even tiny things were far from the least significant and as a pale white light no brighter than a torch flickered on the tip of his shaking index finger he remembered the shadow, the monster that had waded through an entire group of survivors, shredding the warriors and gunslingers that had grown out of his fellow club members as if they were nothing, screaming at his feeble spell before being consumed by it... as had the rising shadows of its latest kills. It had been his very first use of magic in combat, converting the dozen wraiths of his old life into enough of a power boost to flee the doomed state of Florida through the simple, purifying, exalting act of sacrifice. And thus his life had been set on its new course.

Stabs of pain came as the spell flickered in his weak mental grasp and despite his suffering, his exhaustion, the entire cursed aftermath of whatever had happened to reduce him to this state, he persevered. The light grew stronger, more stable, further-reaching and after a long, long time the mental stabs started coming slower and weaker. Eventually he faded into unconsciousness but for the first time in these cycles he had not experienced his own death.

xxxx

He was awake once more and slowly recovering from strangely lingering exhaustion when a woman walked into the room.

No, "walked" was an entirely inadequate description for the way she flitted step by step with superhuman grace and perfect balance with not a single sound. She wore a sports bra and yoga pants of what looked like spun diamonds, glittering in the gloom with their own inner light like threads of some fantasy metal, but where before such garments of alien material, supernaturally skilled construction and so steeped in enhancement they had their own metaphysical weight would have caught the entirety of his attention now they were only momentary distractions from the vision of loveliness they were wrapped around. A subtle play of muscle under soft yet perfectly proportioned curves and flawless golden skin drew the eye like iron filings to a magnet then kept it there with the hypnotic dance that was just her casual walk.

He had never spared much time or thought for the so-called fairer sex, more interested in the mysteries of the world, both mundane and fantastic. Well, he felt like he had been given several compelling reasons to reconsider, his jumbled thoughts sluggishly churning into half-formed plans of getting his new desire. In a dim, distant corner of his mind, the calmer, more rational part of him screamed he was being supernaturally influenced but he pushed those silly thoughts aside. Even if they were true, this supernatural influence was a hell of a lot more pleasant than his aching chest and pounding head had been so whyever would he choose clarity over comfort? Thus decided, he returned to something far more important; his new plans.

Should he prostrate himself and beg? No, a goddess would never lavish any attention whatsoever to something so pathetic. Should he attempt to show his prowess, hunt some great beast and deliver its still-bloody head to her? The thought had a certain crude appeal but he had never been much of a hunter or a warrior. Moreover, the more he thought about it, the more his mind worked through the fog, the more he realized someone so easily impressed by crudity and simple physicality could hardly be called a goddess. No, he should show off his magical prowess, the great mastery of the Arcane Science he had painstakingly earned first through the accidental killing of those shades, then through months of study of Mavethan ruins and the hunting of more monsters, the sacrifice of supers to better understand how magic manifested, then the summoning of spiritual tutors for exchanges of lives and souls for the only thing of value; true knowledge.

Yes, his accomplishments would certainly be impressive. And if not? He now knew many binding spells for both spirits and supers, gleaned from the Invaders' remains or paid for in full from otherworldly sources. Some he had even invented himself. So he would show off, display his true value while biding his time for an answer. If it was not the answer he wanted? Then he would simply Change it. For what was a goddess to a Wizard?

xxxx

"Ah, you are finally awake," she said as the crippled man stirred. No, not crippled, at least not any more. His recovery had come along nicely. "I was beginning to worry your earlier attempt to cast a spell had broken something important," she lied as she took in his condition by multiplying first her diagnosis and cold reading skills, then dividing the chance she had guessed wrong on all the details she had to guess about. It was not infallible, but even on things she'd have normally gotten wrong every time, two halving of failure meant seventy-five percent chance of success and she had it on good authority her luck was at least twice as good as any other super's at her level. That was about as much effort she was willing to waste on an overconfident idiot like this guy. Supers or otherwise, idiots were of limited utility in and of themselves. Fortunately, that did not diminish their worth in the matter of connections. In fact, it only made it easier to get them to share, if this guy's obvious reaction to her multiplied appeal and influence was any indication.

"Worry not," he croaked with a voice raspy from hours of prior screaming, "my own magic is no more threat to me than my own shadow." That was quite a boast. Was he forgetting or maybe ignoring his own spell blowing up in his face earlier?

"You are being reckless again," she said, putting some feigned worry into her voice and expression. Well, not entirely feigned; if he killed himself due to his own stupidity, she'd lose the opportunity he represented. And she'd invested too much of her time to allow that. "I warned you your plans were risky, that the only guarantee I could give was you suffering no permanent harm from them," she lied again. A bit of luck and recklessness adjustment had turned a frankly insane level of risk into a guaranteed failure. However this idiot had convinced the Red Dragon to make the attempt, her own plans could not afford an unlikely success to make the Dragon more powerful than he already was. A near-peer could become an ally even with a small difference in strength; a clear superior would demand subservience instead and the only one Gemini was willing to serve was herself.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"The plan... the ambush..." the Wizard muttered, clutching his pounding head and struggling to remember. "It failed, didn't it?" He hammered his fist against the bed, the solid metal frame bending. Even in his condition, even being a spellcaster instead of a physical powerhouse, The Wizard was powerful enough and careless enough with anything but himself to be a danger to furniture everywhere. "How... why... what happened? I cannot quite remember."

"You came to me a week before with a mutually beneficial offer," Gemini reminded the villain after doubling a chair to sit by the Wizard's bedside and continue her pretense of care. "I would help you carry out an ambush on the Red Dragon's enemies to further assess their capabilities and, through the violence of the battle, generate enough power to hasten the Dragon's next step to ascension." On the surface it was a well-thought-out plan, simple, straightforward and adaptable. The Wizard's abilities with magical manipulation would combine the abilities of many scrub-tier minions too brainwashed to use their own powers with true initiative, bringing to bear enough raw power to achieve at least two of the plan's three main goals. It would have probably worked... if one of the three supers involved hadn't been miss Nuclear Barbie herself. "But then, just as your plan was beginning to work, you were slain and here we are."

The woman who had once been Julia remembered being casually dangled in the air, fingers wrapped around her throat and digging in with bruising force despite her superhuman physique, any attempts to multiply her own resistance or halve the force applied making no difference whatsoever. That had been the blonde who most people saw as a real-life version of Superman. They conveniently forgot she had gained her powers in the same way as the rest of them, through the deaths of monsters. And instead of weapons, or ranged powers, or minions, or trickery, she had literally beaten monsters to death with her bare hands.

For all that she was a hero - and whatever their differences Gemini had no problem admitting the woman chose the right thing far more often than Julia herself ever had - heroes still grew through conflict. And that incident where Gemini had almost been choked because she had made a joke was before the blonde had gone on to kill the Invaders' leader. No, Gemini would stay far, far away from the up and coming face of North American supers. That did not mean she would not profit from this. In fact, she already had in more ways than one.

"...I died. I think... I think I remember it. The battle is coming back to me now." The Wizard sounded lost, a man that spoke as if reciting from a script rather than someone remembering events he had experienced first-hand. "I united the hosts, channeling their collective power into the formation and shattering the mountain. It was glorious!" His beady black eyes shone with mania, as dangerous as it was repulsive. "The Red Witch and the Golden Knight survived of course, but by the time they got out they were already trapped under my dome, worn down by a sustained barrage of fire by a formation of my own invention. Victory was at hand."

Gemini rolled her other body's eyes so the Wizard would not see her exasperation. She had seen enough reverses during the Invasion so she doubted the greatest mage and mad scientist on Earth would go down as easily as this guy thought they would have. No, it was more likely they had been playing the obvious threat, drawing enemy fire to allow Wennefer to act. Quite unexpected; usually it had been the other way around with those three, on account of the blonde being able to survive far more than most other human supers.

"What of the third target?" she had her body by the Wizard's side ask.

"I do not recall seeing her there," he said with further confusion. "Unfortunate, really. The Red Dragon wished to evaluate her capabilities the most."

"Gee, I wonder why," Gemini mocked with her other body beyond the Wizard's hearing.

"Then suddenly... I... d-died..." The man's voice shook at the admission. "I felt the agony of my heart and head exploding from within." He shuddered, his previous arrogance gone. "But how is that possible?!" he whined. "Super or no, a man can't die like this and feel it, experience every detail! Plus you promised I would be safe!" He turned to Gemini with unhinged entitlement to all his failures being undone, to never have been his failures to begin with.

"And you are safe. Here you sit with me, still alive despite being thoroughly and brutally murdered." Not that she had expected anything else, really. "Just as I explained to you when I used my power to double your existence, allowing you to both fight in the battle as well as stay safely outside it. While one part of you died, the other, still linked to the first half, retained all the experiences and gains from the battle."

"Gains? What gains?" he demanded with another whine. "I suffered through all that for nothing!"

"Did you now?" she countered with a knowing smirk. "If you want to utter falsehoods in my presence perhaps you should learn to dissemble better."

"So my magic is changed," he glowered, the infatuation caused by her charm fading as his anger rose. "What of it?"

"Changed... or grown? Five hundred supers died in that battle, sent to their doom by the Red Dragon and you. The violence of the battle itself must have added to that tally."

"Fine, fine, yes, there were some benefits but they were small." If his total gains were less than the Wizard expected... he had fought in the battle, yes. But the instance of him that did so was made by Gemini's power so the majority of his share came to her. And with the little probability manipulation she'd enacted affecting the outcome, she also got a share of the final spoils. It was the same thing she did with all supers that asked for a combat cheat or a temporary boost towards their plans' success. "Now, when will this weakness fade? And can you boost me again? Those bastards must be laughing at how their backstabbing took me down, but they won't be laughing when I get my revenge."

How could the guy have so little self-awareness? She considered denying him then and there but the possibility of repeating her gains from such a huge battle without actually having to risk herself were too tempting. Plus if The Wizard failed once again, there were always other tantalizing outcomes to be found with one finger already on the scales.

"Very well. But I do not think I should double you again so soon after the last time." Because if she kept repeating herself, even her most awesome accomplishments would become boring.

"If you can't double all of me, what else can you do?" He sat up in his bed and paid her even more attention than during her attempt to charm him. Yeah, the guy was a power junky through and through.

"Almost everything can be doubled or halved but you know how it is. The broader the effect, the more costly the spell. Something as broad and useful as doubling all of you was about the limit of how far I could boost you at once, but doing multiple weaker effects at once is possible" she half-lied. The actual limit was that she couldn't produce any temporary effect more powerful overall than herself, nor could she produce permanent effects on people with the exception of having doubled her own existence.

"A similar limit to my own magic, then." He thought about it. "Could you double the output of sacrifices? That should be both narrow and highly useful."

"That is possible, yes." Of course his mind would go there. Why not something more straightforward, like doubling his own magical power or skill?

"How difficult would it be? Would it take more than half of the total available enhancement?"

"No?" If he kept to smaller individual sacrifices it would barely take anything at all.

"Good... that is good..." He nodded to himself, already thinking of potential exploits through mass murder. Unfortunately for the poor, misunderstood, always-failing little Wizard, he had just given her an excellent idea. "Could you also enhance all the parameters of my summoning magic? Double my skill and power with it, halve its cost and casting time, things like that?"

"I can, but that would reach the limits of what help I can provide." He was going for the ol' demon summoning ritual. Predictable yet potentially disastrous. Gemini was already adjusting her plans to fix that though - and reap all the benefits in the process. All it would take was one more doubling and she wouldn't even have to sabotage the Wizard's efforts themselves.

"That is fine. For what I have in mind for the witch and the knight that will be more than enough..." His voice trailed off as he blinked, then blinked again. He just sat there on the bed for a full minute before a baleful red glow surrounded his hand and the temperature of the room dropped a good ten degrees. This he rubbed against his brow, the glow growing stronger the more he did and less flickering and unstable. His eyes focused and regained some of the sharpness from his visit before his ill-thought plan and death. Then he proceeded to do the same with his chest, rubbing the glow repeatedly over his chest, One more minute of that and he was already sitting straighter and his skin had lost the pallid color of a walking corpse and regained most of its vitality.

Gemini watched the obvious magic in fascination. Every super had some sort of power, a theme he could use actively in addition to the passive physical boosts they all shared, but few could cast actual spells. The way she understood it, what separated true mages from the rest was the ability to create varied effects with effectively limitless versatility. Gemini herself could do it within her own theme but she was at the low end of the versatility curve for a mage. The Wizard, as far as she knew, was at the upper extreme and pretty much the best spellcrafter she'd ever seen. His only weakness was that his magic always had a cost to be paid for every spell, but he could choose to pay it with anything. If he hadn't been so small-minded and petty he'd have been as powerful as the Red Dragon by now.

When the red glow faded and the warmth it had stolen slowly returned to the room, The Wizard was no longer feeble, aching and confused. He was alert, awake, and he had both a satisfied and shrewd cut to his expression.

"Gemini," he called out with newfound confidence. "I did not thank you for this opportunity. Allow me to do so now." He slid a finger at the wall, then rubbed the tiny bit of dust he collected between his fingers. The dust seemed to grow and multiply, grains of it dripping down to collect at his upturned palm. They soon became a small pile of dust, before solidifying into a pebble, which grew into a larger rock, which grew into a piece of quartz, which turned to iron. That iron turned to lead, the lead to zinc, the zinc to tin, the tin to copper, which in turn became silver and then gold. The gold lump grew in size until it weighed several pounds, before it took on the bright silver-white color of platinum. The rod of platinum became a grey-black metal whose name Gemini did not know but had seen before in the Warder's creations. Then it took on a bluish tint before turning a green so dark it was almost black.

"And now, for the last step." The dark green metal shifted into the shape of a foot-and-a-half leaf-bladed sword with a simple cross-guard, a banded hilt and a heavy round pommel. Then The Wizard held the hilt with both hands, grabbing it so tightly his fingers creaked. Tiny beads of sweat started forming on the man's forehead as he gritted his teeth in obvious strain. Then his arms started shaking and his eyes cried tears of blood. He started yelling, then as the bloody tears multiplied into thin crimson streams running down his cheeks, the yells turned into roars. The streams flowed faster and wider down The Wizard's neck and started to smoke. They turned left and right across his clavicles, burning through his shirt as if they were molten metal. They reached his shoulders, at which point they caught or perhaps turned into fire and those streams of liquid flame snaked down The Wizard's arms until they reached the sword.

The blade's metal drank in the fire with the wail of a dying man, growing darker and darker and darker with every second until the sword's wail became louder than The Wizard's roars. Then all sounds cut off as if by a knife and the smoking, sizzling-hot blade had turned not just black but like a piece of the void itself, a hole in the fabric of existence that had somehow been cast in the shape of a sword. Then the madman chuckled.

"I admit the sacrifice took more than I'd initially thought it would but that's OK. It also took in all my frailness, exhaustion, pain, fear and lingering mental anguish from my recent ordeal." He very carefully pointed the sword down and let go, the blade dropping point-first to the metal floor from about a foot up. There was no sound of impact, no slowing, no resistance whatsoever as the blade buried itself to the hilt in the power-resistant material.

"A sacrifice of... negative qualities?" she asked with an odd tone in her voice. "How does that even work?" It was her time to be confused and she didn't like it.

"I did not say those negative traits were all I sacrificed but when one is working off unequivalent exchange, sacrificial magic opens to many options that were previously impossible." He reached down and picked up the sword before handing it over to her. "The Mavethans call the material this blade is made of Gloomsteel. It has the curious property of being near-inviolable. It is my gift to you."

"Thanks." Gemini received the weapon carefully, not having missed either how it cleaved through the floor or how The Wizard had been very, very careful to only handle it from the hilt. It was quite a gift if even with her boosting The Wizard had struggled much to make it.

"And now, to more important matters." The Wizard rose from the bed, his ruined shirt becoming pristine once more. "What payment do you want for your services to the Red Dragon?"

"Payment?"

"A favor for a favor. You fulfilled your end of the deal. It was not your fault the plan itself failed."

"Very generous," she said and when The Wizard waited without offering a response she continued. She'd known what she'd ask since before the arrogant mage had first crossed the door of her establishment. "I'd ask for a temporary alliance with the Red Dragon with the goal of mutual benefit. His position has not only risen rapidly in the past weeks, he's about to engage in larger, more dangerous fights. Fights in which my power could tilt the scales one way or another."

"I see..." he nodded immediately. "Truth is, the Red Dragon had already asked me to look into obtaining your services longer term. He and his allies have a plan that could greatly benefit from your contribution. Not as a combatant but as support. He is willing to pay very generously for your services."

"Interesting." Less lucrative than meddling in combat though, unless... "What kind of contribution does he have in mind?"

"One of the simpler ones you can provide, but to a significant extent. The boosts you have given me would let me handle it via magic but the relevant spells are a bit slow. We'd have far better results with your direct help." He turned towards her, smiling pleasantly. Gemini did not trust it at all. "How good are you at permanent duplication?"

She told him, finding no reason not to. The Wizard laughed and laughed and laughed, proving his 'recovery' had only made his madness worse.